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Be A Tree: Reconceptualizing Early Education Through The Roots And Fruits Methodology Of Teaching And Learning, Virginia Dearani

Occasional Paper Series

This past Winter, my seven-year old son lived through a traumatic experience, resulting in the amputation of a significant portion of his middle finger. While reflecting on the concept of being a “Whole Child,” I was engaging in conversations with my son, exploring questions on wholeness, such as, “What is the purpose of our bodies? How will my hand work now with the loss of this finger? How will my classmates see me, and view my finger? When will my nerves re-align as I place my stubbed finger on different textures of fabric, petting our dog, holding my bike handle-bars, …

Introduction: Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care And Education With Equity At The Center, Mark Nagasawa, Cristina Medellin-Paz

Occasional Paper Series

Issue 51 of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series is a response to Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, and Alan Pence’s 25-year interrogation of the concept of quality in early childhood education (ECE) (Dahlberg et al., 1999, 2013, 2023). Their groundbreaking work has called early childhood educators to question deeply held assumptions about the universality of childhood and how these shape the standardization of practices in early childhood settings around the world. They have argued that the homogenization of ECE practices is a factoryization of early childhood that undermines cultural pluralism and the field’s equity aspirations. This raises an imperative to …

Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care And Education With Equity At The Center

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Trees In Our City How A Tree And A Small Patch Of Dirt Inspired A Classroom, Zuleika Hines

Occasional Paper Series

As a new Director in a new school, I knew that I wanted the children to have a curiosity for nature. But to lead the children to a place of discovery, they would need the opportunity to observe, play, and engage in elements of nature that would support hands-on activities both in the classroom and outside. When the opportunity came for me to build my own early childhood program, I knew that I had a unique opportunity to incorporate elements of nature in the design of the classroom. But I wanted nature to be local and the trees of our …

Indigenous Pedagogies: Land, Water, And Kinship

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Indigenous Water Pedagogies: Cultivating Relations Through The Reading Of Water, Forrest Bruce, Megan Bang, Anna Lees, Nikki Mcdaid, Felicia Peters, Jeanette Bushnell

Occasional Paper Series

In this paper we put forth a model of Indigenous pedagogies that cultivate more ethical relations and complex thinking about water. The first dimension of Indigenous water pedagogies is relations with water which involves ethical decision-making involving water and other more-than-human beings that are in relation to water. The second dimension is reading water which involves learning to make sense of complex phenomena to build theories and explanations about water is it exists in the environment. Together, these two dimensions support complex thinking and decision-making about water in a way that is guided with reciprocal relations with water. We discuss …

Indigenous Pedagogies: Land, Water, And Kinship, Anna Lees, Megan Bang

Occasional Paper Series

Indigenous communities, across lands and waters, engage in and build complex knowledge systems emergent from particular values and ways of perceiving and being in the world (Cajete, 1994; Deloria & Wildcat, 2001). Indigenous knowledge systems, values, and ways of being are understood and enacted within socio-ecological systems grounded in reciprocal kin relations. Meaning: for Indigenous peoples, teaching, learning, living, and being in relation with human and more-than-human beings is central to our knowledge systems. In Issue #49 of the Bank Street Occasional Papers, Indigenous Pedagogies: Land, Water and Kinship, we bring together Indigenous educators and researchers to demonstrate how Indigenous …

Learning To See More Clearly: Extending Lucy Sprague Mitchell’S Vision For Geography Teaching, Abigail Kerlin, Ellen Mccrum

Occasional Paper Series

In 1934, Lucy Sprague Mitchell called for teachers and students to make maps in order to better understand the world around them. Her inquiry method is still critical to developing geographic thinking in students and can be extended further. Map making can not only clarify relationships in our environments, it can also be used to develop students’ abilities in perspective taking. Making maps, sharing and juxtaposing of maps can support students in understanding that others experience the world differently. Maps can tell stories of our experiences in space that can expand our understanding of one another. This understanding of a …

Moving Into A New Realm Of Education And Parenting, Katherine Rodriguez-Agüero

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Black Feminist Love: An Open Letter To My Children, Katie Harlan Eller

Occasional Paper Series

In an open letter to my young twins, I reflect on an open letter from the past and consider the context of this one: the historic moment of living through a pandemic anticipating a presidential election in 2020. In this reflection, I document the circumstances of our family’s life and turn toward what we are learning. My children have taught me to recognize my need for and commitment to Black feminist conceptions of love. I share a story and imagine letting go of conditional, enwhitened love that fears discomfort. Black feminist conceptions of love cannot coexist with fear and must …

An Invitation To Imagine Education Otherwise, Grasilel Esperanza Diaz

Occasional Paper Series

This article presents an invitation to imagine education otherwise, what education could be if we took a restorative justice approach and make immediate changes. It focuses on the changes needed to make this vision a reality. Covid-19 has exposed many of the inequalities that exist in education and how these inequalities have negative effects on the neediest students. You are invited to imagine schools as sites of justice and freedom, to think of teaching that is centered on children, caring, and building relationships with families.

Recognizing And Sustaining #Blackgirlmagic: Reimagining Justice-Oriented Approaches In Teacher Education, Tia C. Madkins

Occasional Paper Series

As our global public health, race, and education crises continue to converge, PK-12 teachers must engage justice-oriented pedagogies. This historical moment highlights BIPOC children’s dehumanizing experiences, yet Black girls’ educational lives remain invisible. To address these issues within teacher education, scholars suggest teachers need to develop critical consciousness and reject deficit views of students, especially Black girls. Therefore, I discuss how we can support educators and teacher educators in recognizing and sustaining #BlackGirlMagic (i.e., Black girls’ and women’s universal awesomeness and brilliance). We can prepare educators to celebrate the diversity of Black girlhoods and disrupt monolithic views of who Black …

Enlaces In Reflections And (Re)Memberings As Latina Border-Crossers: Journeys Of Childhood And Professional Un/Welcomings, Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, Paty Abril-Gonzalez, Cinthya Saavedra, Michelle Salazar Pérez

Occasional Paper Series

We are humbled to be part of this special issue honoring the life work of Jonathan Silin. His scholarship and activism have opened spaces for future generations, like our own, to share our testimonios. We are straddling between being former early childhood teachers and current teacher educators—between our profe lives and our everyday lived experiences as Latina border crossers. Testimonios, which we engage in for this piece, have herstorically captured intimate tellings that connect individual struggles and strengths to the larger collective (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012; Latina Feminist Group, 2001). It is in these testimonios that women …

Keep Yourself Alive: Welcoming The Next Generation Of Queer And Trans Educators, Harper Keenan

Occasional Paper Series

Dear new queer/trans educator,

Welcome to the work of education. I am glad that you are here to take part in the wonderfully challenging task of supporting young people to learn more about how we might be together. I often think of classrooms and other educational spaces as something like a dance floor, where people who may not know one another gather together and learn how to interact and relate to one another in shared space.

Facilitating Conversations On Difficult Topics In The Classroom: Teachers’ Stories Of Opening Spaces Using Children’S Literature

Occasional Paper Series

For this edition of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we invited educators to share stories from their practice: times when they utilized children’s literature and conversations to address real life; the difficult topics that children experience through the mirror of their own experiences or the windows of their peers, communities, or world.

Storytime Is A Sunrise: Employing Children’S Literature To Mediate Socio-Emotional Challenges In The Life Of A Young Child, Carolina Soto Bonds

Occasional Paper Series

This piece explores the trials and victories of a teacher's literary therapy for Will* a student faced with the ravages of mental health struggles and instability in his home life. The purpose here is to divulge the vulnerabilities of a personal story in the hopes of generating support for other educators who might be battling similar conflicts. Along the way, as varying children's books like My Happy Sad Mummy, by Michelle Vasiliu, and The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas, play integral parts in emotional healing, the teacher confronts her own internal unrests as Will's obstacles inch too close to home. …

Possibilities And Problems In Trauma-Based And Social Emotional Learning Programs

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Threading The Needle: On Balancing Trauma And Critical Teaching, Brian Gibbs, Kristin Papoi

Occasional Paper Series

This essay describes and takes up the task of what the authors call threading the needle—teaching difficult content with a critical lens while simultaneously teaching with a trauma-informed pedagogy. Drawing data from three qualitative studies, one focused on teachers teaching for social justice in unjust school spaces, another looking at how teachers teach war to the children of soldiers, and a third how teachers teach lynching in schools near historic lynching sites, this manuscript argues that threading the needle is made more difficult by a too generalized definition of trauma informed teaching, shortsighted professional development on the topic, and too …

Emotionally Responsive Practice As Trauma Informed Care: Parallel Process To Support Teacher Capacity To Hold Children With Traumatic History, Lesley Koplow, Noelle Dean, Margaret Blachly

Occasional Paper Series

This article features an adult-focused trauma informed approach that is an integral part of Bank Street’s Emotionally Responsive Practice work in schools. The authors share stories of parallel process work with teachers and administrators in various school settings, giving the reader insight into an approach that supports integration of the teacher’s past and present, and promotes empathy for the children they once were, as well as the children who fill their classrooms. The work is situated within the context of the high prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences that impact our communities of both children and adults, and leave them vulnerable …

All I Want To Say Is That They Don’T Really Care About Us: Creating And Maintaining Healing-Centered Collective Care In Hostile Times, Asif Wilson, Wytress Richardson

Occasional Paper Series

Too often educators (care-givers) are left to navigate toxic work environments without proper support to combat the systemic issues they face daily. Institutions of higher education have neglected to make the health and well-being of care-givers a priority. This failure continues to maintain and perpetuate the oppressive conditions that mirror trauma, pain and stress. The authors of this study extend Ginwright’s (2018) healing centered engagement to conceptualize what they call healing centered collective care—a fugitive framework of care for the care-givers. Data was collected through two case studies and those generative themes are presented using testimonios from the authors.

Why Trouble Sel? The Need For Cultural Relevance In Sel, Julia Mahfouz, Vanessa Anthony-Stevens

Occasional Paper Series

With regards to efforts to imagine more equitable spaces of learning for all students, we are compelled to ask: How can SEL programs address the needs of marginalized, minoritized, and/or historically under-resourced students without deeply considering the cultured context of social interaction and school learning? Although evidence shows SEL programs yield benefits in multiple domains, most programs are based on monolithic approaches that often do not consider dynamics of power and oppression in the context of schooling. In this paper, we discuss the crucial role of culture in SEL frameworks. We propose adopting an interdisciplinary lens to integrate culturally relevant …

The Best Of Both Worlds: Partnering With The Community To Create The Guttman Center For Early Care And Education, Robin Hancock

Occasional Paper Series

The Guttman Center for Early Care and Education was established in the fall of 2016 at Bank Street College with the intention of providing quality professional development and support to Family Child Care Providers (early childhood educators running small private daycares out of their homes) in Brooklyn, New York. Completely free to all participants, the Center seeks to attract providers, regardless of age, education level or years of experience, who were interested in deepening their understanding of early childhood development. Through a deep touch community engagement strategy and utilization of Bank Street's renowned Infancy Masters Program, early educators are encouraged …

Preparing Infant-Toddler Professionals: A Community College’S Perspective, Jennifer M. Longley, Jennifer M. Gilken

Occasional Paper Series

Preparing professionals to work with infants/ toddlers is complex and unique because of the age group. Community colleges have an integral role in the preparation of infant/ toddler professionals, The Borough of Manhattan Community College infant/ toddler preservice program identified the following four elements to prepare professionals to deliver high-quality, relationship-based practices: (1) relationship-based program, (2) fieldwork opportunities, (3) curriculum, and (4) faculty.

High-Needs Schools: Preparing Teachers For Today's World

Occasional Paper Series

In the second decade of the 21st century, some schools are in trouble and some schools are not. The subject of this Occasional Paper is the preparation of teachers for schools that--lacking sufficient resources, effective leadership, or vocal advocates--are failing to educate their students by any reasonable measures. The teachers and teacher educator contributors to this volume offer a more variegated set of responses grounded in a diversity of local experiences. Their approaches to researching and understanding the immediacy of becoming a teacher are based on decades of working in hard-pressed urban schools and the institutions that supply them with …

Toward A More Loving Framework For Literacy Education

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Progressive Practices In Public Schools

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Constructivists Online: Reimagining Progressive Practice

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Claiming The Promise Of Place-Based Education

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Supporting Young Children Of Immigrants In Prek-3

Occasional Paper Series

This special issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that can positively impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. We consider the intersectionality of young children’s lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively contribute to children’s experiences at school and in other instructional contexts, rather than prevent them from getting the learning experiences they need and deserve.

Power To Change: Math As A Social-Emotional Language In A Classroom Of 4 And 5 Year Olds, Elinor J. Albin, Gretchen Vice

Occasional Paper Series

Tells the story of how mathematics influenced a long term investigation around feeling powerful within an early childhood classroom. Written by Early Childhood Teacher, Elinor J. Albin, and Dean of Faculty, Gretchen Vice, this essay outlines the guiding questions by which teachers at The Advent School in Boston, MA connect mathematics to overarching themes and social-emotional learning. “Power to Change” concludes with observations about how and why mathematics provided a language for building social-emotional intelligence in four and five year olds.